


Drink in Your Breath

by Coldest_Fire



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I don’t know how to tag or what to tag, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt, dont worry he doesn’t die, hanahaki, just another soulmate au, suicide by flowers not anything more graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-14 07:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13585416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: One black rose left his lips, such a deep, inky colour that you couldn’t see the blood on it, and he put it in her hand, his throat barely able to rasp out “…thought you should have it.”Her eyes widened. She knew what the rose meant.





	1. his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb

**Author's Note:**

> Or: his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb (both of which are quotes from Les fleurs du mal by Charles Beaudelaire, who JD quotes in the actual musical!) 
> 
> Hey, A03! This was written at 3 am, by a uni writing Student with a test tomorrow that I’m denying. I figure in this verse, minor episodes of hanahaki happen from time to time, but it’s uncommon for it to get so bad that it kills people. A lot of them opt for the the surgery, or pills to keep it down, or therapy to learn not to think about the person they’re meant to be with, because seeing them and thinking about them trigger more flowers to grow and faster growth. JD will do none of these things, because he’s JD.

It was hard to breathe around her, but infinitely harder to stop. She was a fucking contradiction, wasn’t she? A girl with a soul working for Stiletto Stalin and her lot, like they didn’t see how much more she was than all this, like somehow she didn’t see it. He couldn’t stop talking around her any more than he could stop breathing, but she made him want—no, need to do both. He told her everything, as he felt the weight beginning to build in his lungs, though he ignored it. It was probably his better judgement telling him that Veronica Sawyer didn’t give a shit about the last ten schools he’d been to, or his dead mother, or his shitty, good for nothing dad, who he had to speak for, in their weird backwards way, or he’d just assume JD didn’t need anything. The number of words he’d put in his mouth, the times Big Bud found him bloody by the sink, the number of times he said. “Shit, that looks deep, son, why don’t I help you bandage it?”

Big bud had only replied with a shrug and a “you probably shouldn’t see this, pop. You wouldn’t understand what this is like.” He hadn’t wanted the old man to understand. He’d wanted to know that if he offed himself in the bathroom, someone would give a fuck. And now, his latest delusion was that Veronica Sawyer would. Veronica Sawyer was too good for someone broken like him. She’d go to Harvard and have two point five kids and a picket fence with some lawyer who’d never appreciate her the way he did in these moments, the way she laid her hand over his when he mentioned that his mom was dead, like she wasn’t afraid of him.

And he didn’t stop. She asked him, barely breathing the words how he was strong enough to go on, and he laughed bitterly. He went on by freezing his brain, shutting his eyes until nothing else was real, and, when all else failed, tearing up his arms, watching red bead across his tanned skin with a kind of detachment, like it wasn’t really his body. That pain was better than the feeling he got in chest, like his lungs and heart and everything that mattered had been cut out, and he was a hollow shell of a human being. “…and that’s how I forget who I am,” he sighed, taking a long sip of his slurpee, like a hit of a drug, letting the pain flash across his forehead and eyes, blinding for a short moment. “Forget in a couple months, I’ll be somewhere completely new.” and he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay in Sherwood, because she was here, and she was hearing him. 

“Forget that little voice in the back of my head that says this could all get a lot easier if I give in and just open an artery,” he confessed finally, confused when pain flashed though her eyes. Not her pain, a glance down at her exposed forearms told him that she’d never done this. It was his pain he saw there in her eyes, like somehow the idea of him hurting hurt her. 

He leaned in imperceptibly when he heard a voice at the door, annoyed. “Veronica!” He wished it wouldn’t freak Veronica out if he pulled his gun and shot Heather where she stood, for taking Veronica away, treating her like some kind of forgery printer, like just another of her colour co-ordinated dolls to line up all in a row. “Corn nuts!” she snapped, seizing the bag from her violently, gripping her shoulders to escort her towards the door. “Wave goodbye to Red Dawn and let’s motor!”

She forgot her slurpee. He picked up the tall blue cup, pressing his lips to the straw, but not sucking anything in, tasting her fruity lipgloss, and feeling pain swelling in his lungs and not his forehead. What the fuck? He staggered back, almost dropping the slurpee as he bent over to cough. Something came up his throat, something that felt so sharp as he hacked and so soft on his tongue, and he spat it into his hand, seeing the beautiful blue flower spattered with blood. It was shaped like the bell of a trumpet, with a white centre that faded into blue petals, the same colour as her blazer had been. He felt his lungs protest and another cough wrapped his body, producing another of them. 

His mother had done the same thing. 

When JD was nine, he’d walked into his mother’s room to see a bucket of the flowers, not just speckled with blood, but stained with it, coated so much their whole centres had been dyed red, blood glinting wetly against petals that were a deep violet. She’d told him not to worry, told him she was fine, whatever she had to say to get him out of the room, but he knew what they were. Flowers, he knew, meant death. Excruciating death, where shit grew in your lungs, and suffocated you, until whatever asshole you loved either loved you back, or let you die. 

Two weeks later, his mother had left a trail of bloody flowers when she staggered into that library, mustering the strength to stand up straight once she was inside, to wave ruefully to the son she had with the man who’d never loved her. Through the streaky glass, her son hadn’t seen the tears that flowed down her cheeks as she bent over to give another cough, but instead of the wet, deathly sound JD was so used to hearing, there was a louder one. Fire and ash, and rubble, and before it, a path of bloodstained morning glories, all because his asshole dad couldn’t have cared about her a little more. No, instead, he blew her to pieces. 

In a way, JD was glad it happened to him as well, eight miserable years later. He knew what she’d felt, in those last moments, how excruciating the pain got to be, while your lungs stretched to accommodate the invasion, and your chest felt like one of these coughs was going to rip it open. Morning glories, he learned, were usually fatal. They were for love that couldn’t happen, for the shortness of human life, and he thought, for the nine year old boy who’d watched the only other person he cared about die weeks before her death. It was fucking perfect that Veronica Sawyer, the only other person who’d ever listen brought this out in him. The prick in his lungs felt like he was growing knives and not flowers, but it was almost comforting. All these years wanting it to be over, and she gave it to him. He’d thank her if it wouldn’t horrify her either that he loved her or that he wanted to choke on his love for her.

Stifling another cough, he took a long hit of her slurpee, again savouring the last of her lip gloss against his lips. Cherry slush flooded his senses and fought the burn in his throat, numbed everything until he couldn’t think. She’d even left him one last gift. Veronica Sawyer was a fucking saint. 

The boy at the till didn’t even have the heart to reprimand him as he set a bloody morning glory on the counter instead of money for the drinks. Why not give the dying man one last good thing? 

He didn’t feel anything but the wind on his face and the burning in his lungs as he took his bike home, abandoning it on his driveway, seeing his dad’s truck wasn’t yet there to park beside it. Maybe, he’d be really lucky and he’d be dead by the time his dad got home. Sometimes, depending on the strength of the feelings, it didn’t take long. 

Thinking about her smile was the sweetest form of suicide, and he hacked bouquets into buckets at his bed side to her image, summoning up the feeling of her warmth on his hand. He could perfectly imagine her voice, and he made it say everything he’d never heard before, everything he craved to hear from her. He made her say that she loved him, that she was proud that she knew him, made her tell him that his mom hadn’t wanted to leave him behind, and that she didn’t want him to leave her behind. Fucking right. She wouldn’t even remember his name after the week it ran in the obituary section of the small-town news paper. 

She felt warm, everything about her was warm, and he was a man of ice. Thinking about her unmade him, singed his throat, unravelled his being and he was addicted to it. She was better than cutting. That hurt, but it made him feel like he was alive. She was agony, pure agony to the lungs, the throat, even his ribs and back and abs, all of which were starting to strain form the constant coughing. She was also heaven, imagining her warmth, but all over, just what it would be like to hold her, have her laying on top of him, resting her head against a chest that didn’t ache with longing for her. The flowers were coming up in multiples, coming up slick with blood as the day he first met his soulmate died, and he hoped he could too, before the next dawn. Before tomorrow became real. 

He’d never heard of it acting this fast, but he could scarcely wheeze a breath in without hacking up at least a couple petals in the process. Maybe it was his smoker’s lungs, or maybe it was the way he loved her with everything in him, just for the way her eyes had flashed when he mentioned that he wanted to die, the way that had mattered to her, the way she’d tried to comfort him in small ways for his mother’s death, even though that was a wound that should have long healed. He loved her laugh, and the ways she smiled at him, and the way she made him feel like he mattered. He’d felt her eyes on him when he was fighting those assholes in the cafeteria, and yet she hand’t flinched away from him in the 7-11. She’d seen the worst of him and it hadn’t changed her, hadn’t taken her away from him.

Loving Veronica Sawyer was the most pleasureful suicide that existed, even with his throat scraped raw and his lungs threatening to tear from the flowers filling them, killing him. He’d write her a note, but then she’d forever have to live with the fact that some guy she’d known for a day offed himself thinking of her. She wouldn’t understand that this was a gift that she’d given him, that he lived to die, lived for the moment he didn’t have to feel like this any longer, like no one would ever give a shit, like the world was too broken, and instead of fixing it, he just served to make it worse. But she’d given him one moment where he could be real and not just the violent new kid who liked to see if he could get expelled before his dad uprooted them, where he could be a person, one she cared for in some minute quantity.

Fuck, she was beautiful. Not just because of the makeup, or the way the blue outfit clung tight to her in the right places, or because of whatever the Furies had done with her hair that made it look tousled, but artfully so, like a lover had run their hands through it gently. And fuck, what he wouldn’t have given to be that lover, not for the sex but for the warmth, for the love. No, Veronica was beautiful because of the light in her light brown eyes, and because of her laugh, and her compassion. She was probably the kind of person who still believed there was good in everyone. The kind of person he’d have fought for, except than now his love for her was ripping him apart from the inside, and the constant battles, the endless war was over. 

And then, a clatter outside his window, and he held in a violent cough as he heard a feminine voice mutter “fuck you too, fence.” He didn’t think it could be her, but something in him wanted it to be. Wanted her to save him, because he knew he wouldn’t see the sun rising in six and a half hours, when it was set to. Hanahaki was supposed to take weeks to kill. Some kid in New Jersey had survived seven years of it, supposedly. He got less than eleven hours. He bent over the bucket, feeling a whole bouquet tearing past his throat, some of the flowers even having bits of their stems attached. 

Another clatter and his body was starting to weaken, he could feel the colour draining out of him. Her slurpee long gone, there was nothing but him and the pain. Him and the imprint in him only she could fill, and flowers that should have been her blue but came up black and red because of the amount of blood. Behind his curtains, he heard another thump, and then a crack, like the cheap, plastic lock on his window giving way. 

Was someone coming in to rob the place? They’d be sorely disappointed. He and his father travelled light, and destruction wasn’t as lucrative as his dad pretended. The most valuable thing here was his bike. 

And then, he realized it. He must have already died, because there she was. Haloed in moonlight, in that same blue blazer she’d been in at the 7-11, face red from exertion or maybe from the shots she’d taken and her eyes dark with something he didn’t recognize. His angel, his Veronica Sawyer, come to take him away in death. It was sweet of whichever god was too sick a fuck to fix shit for people when they were alive to at least give him one last moment in death. 

“Sorry,” she said, looking around the sparseness of his room before those eyes settled on him. “Hope I didn’t wake you…even though it’s…twelve fifty two?” she squinted at a watch in the dark. She paused a moment, as if unsure. Maybe she didn’t know where to bring him but he’d walk straight to Hell if she lead him, without any regret. “I just thought…I’m dead on Monday, when Heather Chandler is done with me. And I thought that I could ride you until I broke you?” 

His eyes widened, taking her in, as a convulsive cough wracked his body, ripping more flowers than ever before from his lungs, and she watched, horrified as he spewed them out, one by one into the bucket. The pain made it real, it always had, and it hit him that this was Veronica, standing before him, asking to fuck him on what she called her metaphorical last night alive, and he knew it to be his literal one. red blood stained the fabric of the white tank top he’d slipped on to sleep in, droplets spattering the fabric like bullet wounds, and it hit him how much smaller he felt in a room alone with her, without his coat, without his armour. She saw him now, in all his fucked up entirety, in the way he craved either life with her or the death that loving her brought him. He probably wouldn’t make it an hour longer, so close to her, he could smell artificial cherries, and cheap shots, Heather Chandler’s cloying perfume, and something indescribable beneath that all. So close he could almost feel her warmth. “Works for me,” he said weakly.

Veronica looked into the bucket, blanching when she saw an onslaught of bloody flowers. “That’s…that’s Hanahaki…” she mumbled, taking a step towards him, shucking off her jacket, and getting into the bed beside him, but not touching him like he expected. The lust was gone from her eyes as she stroked his hair with the kind of tenderness that he swore would break him. He had to bite his lip to keep himself from crying, from begging her to love him, because this was death, and as much as he’d wanted it, her actually being here made him want to exist. “We need to get you to a hospital. they can get it out, and…” she trailed off. 

He shook his head vehemently. Yes, they could surgically remove the flowers, but assuming he didn’t die in the time it took the ambulance to get here, or die when, inevitably, Veronica let him go alone, they’d rip away all the warmth, and the understanding, and the light in her eyes and the fruity lipgloss and replace it with the kind of emptiness that ate a person from under their ribs. He couldn’t bear for his lungs and his heart to be empty any longer. He couldn’t bear living any longer for death, living in the aftermath of his soulmate, knowing he’d never feel any of it again. He physically wouldn’t be able to. “No…” he choked out a couple more blossoms, “please, just…I can’t lose her.”

She understood. God damn him, she was perfect, as she slid beside him, and pulled him down from his sitting position to lay in her arms. This was where he wanted to die, right here, with her warmth engulfing him. He hacked a few more blossoms out, as he felt her fingers tracing comforting circles on his shoulder, while her head rested over his chest, just like he’d dreamed, and her other hand laced with his, squeezing it firmly. “Can I stay? No one should have to do this alone.” her voice was soft but so sure, and it rung through his head as more flowers tumbled past his lips. 

He was choking on his love for her, but she’d hold him for the last moments. It wasn’t enough. For the choking to stop she’d have to love him, something he’d never ask of her, but he wouldn’t die as he’d lived, alone. He didn’t even speak, not certain his lungs would accommodate talking anymore. He’d already stained her white blouse, and opening his mouth would lead to more blood staining her. He just nodded. 

Veronica’s face spoke straight to his heart, which beat frantically, trying to get oxygen to his body. “You’re so beautiful, JD,” she mumbled, and he gave another cough, unable to hold back, strewing blood and flowers down her back and apologizing in a hoarse, raspy voice. It wouldn’t be long now, having her here but not having her was speeding it along. “I…I don’t understand why…” she didn’t say it, but he knew what she was implying, that somehow, she didn’t understand why his soulmate didn’t want him. She didn’t know… he was sure if she did, she wouldn’t be holding him like she was, and he didn’t have it in him to tell her. Why should she have to live with that guilt?

The tears he was stifling finally began to slip as he felt hers dampening his shirt. She was a saint, giving him this in his ending, holding him so he wouldn’t die in obscurity, so someone would know before his dad came upstairs to investigate the smell of his rotting flesh. Someone would know he was gone, might even care he was gone, might go home, and take off the shirt he’d ruined and cry for him, and that hurt his lungs worse, that he was hurting her. He grew dizzy from the lack of oxygen as she held him, her hand leaving his to brush away a crystalline tear as he grabbed the bucket to cough out more flowers, feeling one lodge in his throat like a thousand knives, this one more painful than all the rest. He couldn’t breathe around it, so he coughed, forced it out, faced with the end and desperately longing to prolong it, to be held just a little longer. It tore past his lips, and bit into his tongue as a little air was able to get down his throat, and he gasped for it.

One black rose left his lips, such a deep, inky colour that you couldn’t see the blood on it, and he put it in her hand, his throat barely able to rasp out “…thought you should have it.” 

Her eyes widened. She knew what the rose meant. Love lost. It was typical for someone who died of Hanahaki to be buried with one. Usually one of the last flowers they coughed up, though his mom didn’t let the disease get that far. They would also be sent to whoever the soulmate was, if the dead person identified them before they were gone. He just wanted to give her something worth holding onto with his last breaths, give something to the girl who made sure he wasn’t alone in theses final moments—even if she couldn’t love him, and make him stop. Her hand delicately took the flower, and he saw her fingertips, like moonlight staining with crimson. Those thorns had ripped apart his throat, but he was used to that kind of pain, it was better than the ache of knowing that she didn’t love him. 

Her voice was soft, gentle as she pulled back an instant to look at him. “Me?” she asked him, tears now freely flowing down her face, and he wanted to take them away. He’d even suffer through another rose if it could make those tears stop. He didn’t want the last thing he saw to be devastation in the one person he’d ever truly loved, but of course that was all he could do. He could never give her anything good, or she’d have stopped him. His lungs strained and wheezed as his vision began to feather at the edges, and his extremities started to sting like he’d over exerted himself. It wouldn’t be long now. “JD,” she said gently, and he hoped that was the last thing he heard, her voice saying his name, and maybe he could freeze this moment with her. 

And then, her hand threaded back through his, the rose pressed between them and he could feel her tears spattering his face, as his eyes shut. ‘Good bye, Veronica,’ he thought, ‘thank you for letting me feel warm.’

And then, lips touched, just tentatively. Thee hand the wasn’t in his hair braced her beside his head, and he casted fruity lipgloss, and cheap shots, and smelled Heather Chandler’s terrible perfume. And her lips pressed to his more insistently, nipping his lower lip, her tongue entering his bloody mouth, as though trying to take the flowers from him. His lungs surged. Desperately, he pushed her away, grabbing the bucket and coughing convulsively, leaves and stems and tangles of flowers forcing their way through, all stained crimson with his blood, but less blood than before. Some of the flowers were still blue. 

He gasped for air, feeling nothing aching in his lungs, though it baffled him. He still loved her. He knew he did, her warmth, her compassion, the way she was willing to comfort someone she hadn’t even known 24 hours in his last moments. He loved Veronica as much as he had when the flowers had been ripping apart his lungs. But he could breathe. It was all out, overflowing the bucket, and he could breathe. 

He took fast, deep gulps of air as he sat up, shoving the bucket away, and looking at her, blurred though the tears in his eyes, before he pulled her back to him, let his lips crash against hers as he finally breathed, because she’d saved his lungs. She’d saved all of him. the rose between their hands pricked at his skin as he held her tighter, strength gradually flooding back into his body as he released her lips and sobbed openly. He’d lived eight years waiting desperately for death to take him, and he didn’t want it any longer. He wanted her. Head resting on her shoulder, voice still harsh for all his throat had endured he whispered, “Veronica,” just softly, before saying the words that really mattered. “I love you.”

She didn’t even hesitate, laying him down, her own body atop his, making him feel like he was glowing from the bottom of his healing lungs. “I love you too, JD,” she said softly, before finally, they slept.


	2. Die Slowly Beneath Her Gaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his deep brown eyes—almost black, really—she saw the hurt. She saw her knight, fighting the voices in his head in trench wars across his arms, and she hoped he won, hoped they never beat him, dug too deep and struck the artery. It hurt to think of him that way, that this guy she saw as a knight, may not have survived to this moment. May not survive into the next day, or week, or month or year. Then hurt that flickered though her eyes was shallower than his, didn’t enact its wars across her skin, but filled her tear ducts with empathy.
> 
> She opened her mouth to speak, but words felt superficial as her eyes stayed on his and she saw the pain that flashed to the depths of them, but missed the way his breath seemed to catch for a moment. What could she say that took away years of loss, years of being at war with society and with the voices for control of his artery, that could make a difference?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, archive. Sorry this happened so late, I'm actually really excited to be sharing it with you, and some other Heathers fic really soon, I hope! This was also written by a creative writing student at stupid o'clock at night, but was edited by my amazing girlfriend. Chapter title is also stolen from a Baudelaire quote.

From the first moment they spoke, she knew he was different. His first words to her were about her soul, and then were Baudelaire, about how they were all born marked for evil. From that moment, she saw a different side to him, one she almost second guessed when moments later, he was thrashing Kurt and Ram. She shouldn’t have fantasized, it was dangerous—what if she fell too far in love with the idea of a stranger, and wound up with petals in her lungs—but he seemed like the knights from the books her parents read her as a child. He seemed like the type to fight for people who couldn’t protect themselves, skilled with a sword (or, she supposed with his fists and a textbook) but also to have a moral code. Knighthood wasn’t about slaying, but about protecting. What she wouldn’t give for this beautiful stranger to fight for her. 

She was thrilled to even have the chance to talk at 7-11, a place where time seemed to stop and allow them a moment to be real, a moment apart from the rest of her life at Westerberg High. He was JD, just a boy who wasn’t afraid to talk to her like another human being, not afraid to be more than the caricature of masculinity Kurt and Ram embodied. She wasn’t the blue pseudo-Heather, she was Veronica Sawyer, who laughed when they talked about his dad’s commercial, Veronica who admitted in the most conspiratorial of tones that she didn’t really like her friends either. Maybe he knew that meant she didn’t like the things they made her do, the way she had to treat people. Maybe he knew that she was sick of the eat or be eaten mentality about popularity, like if you weren’t beating everyone else down, they’d beat you down. She didn’t say any of it, it was way too much to tell him in this first meeting, even after hearing that the 7-11 was his comfortable place, no matter where his dad relocated them, even through ten schools. These linoleum aisles were more his friend than anyone he’d met in school. 

And then she ruined it trying to flirt, as he took a long sip of his slurpee after joking that these were his drug, and asking if she cared for a hit. “Does your mom know you eat all that crap?” she’d quipped, realizing after the words had left her mouth that she hadn’t heard anything about Mrs. Dean. 

He took a deep breath, “not anymore,” he said slowly, hand gripping the metal counter too tightly for the way he leaned into it to be nonchalant. He told her that his mom was gone, had been for years, and she saw his fingers trying to dig through the metal to find something to hold onto, and acting without thinking, laid her hand over his, feeling it slowly relax beneath hers. His hand was so cold, from the metal counter and the frozen drink, and she sipped her own delicately as he continued. “living with just dad did teach me a couple things though. I can make pasta, and pay the rent on time,” he hesitated with his last point biting his lip as if it would fly out of his mouth without him restraining it, before releasing it gently, like you’d set a paper boat into water. “learnt you can’t expect shit from the world…or anyone in it.”

And just as she’d tried to counter that, tried to ask him why he felt that way so she could try to show him that there were good things, things to live for, he’d changed topics on her, asking about her future. He teased her that she’d wind up with a degree in whatever she wanted, and a lawyer husband. She’d almost forgotten the sadness that was etched into his face when he spoke of his mom, the tension in his hand, and the cynicism of his last words, lost to his teasing, but some part of him was held back. “and I hope that it doesn’t crash down around you,” he intoned, suddenly serious, suddenly telling her that in this world, she needed to have walls, needed to lock everyone out of who she was, for her own safety, ironic from a man whose secrets were spilling form him like blood from a wound. 

“How do you keep going when it does?” she asked, so taken aback by the honesty in the way he spoke, the way he let her in past all his own walls, let her see where he was damaged, and repairing himself, the mental scars that she wouldn’t have even cared tell her friends about. She wanted to know how he was able to be strong, and vulnerable and real, so real she could feel his chill through her hand that hadn’t left his. 

“You force the thoughts to freeze,” he articulated, taking a long sip of his blue slurpee, as she took a slower sip of her cherry flavoured slush. He was nearly done his, but hers was still mostly full. “you close your eyes when you can’t stand for any of it to be real.” He looked like he had a third point, but again he bit it back, and she wondered if a kiss would part his lips enough the words could escape. Not because she wanted to pry, necessarily, but because he was beautiful, and real, and she wanted him in her arms, because his whole body was full of icy slush to cope, and hers was warm, there was something so small she could give him, after everything. As she thought about it, he told her that was how he forgot who he was, that was how he forgot that nothing could ever be permanent, and that he’d be leaving before he managed to find anything to care about. 

And then, he spoke words that chilled her to the bone, because of how sincere they were, how certain she could be that he meant them. He told her of, “that little voice in the back of my head that says this could all get a lot easier if I give in and just open an artery.” In his deep brown eyes—almost black, really—she saw the hurt. She saw her knight, fighting the voices in his head in trench wars across his arms, and she hoped he won, hoped they never beat him, dug too deep and struck the artery. It hurt to think of him that way, that this guy she saw as a knight, may not have survived to this moment. May not survive into the next day, or week, or month or year. Then hurt that flickered though her eyes was shallower than his, didn’t enact its wars across her skin, but filled her tear ducts with empathy. 

She opened her mouth to speak, but words felt superficial as her eyes stayed on his and she saw the pain that flashed to the depths of them, but missed the way his breath seemed to catch for a moment. What could she say that took away years of loss, years of being at war with society and with the voices for control of his artery, that could make a difference? Say too much and it would be like Ms Fleming’s motivational speeches, would sound pretentious, like she thought she could understand. Veronica didn’t understand. Her body was never a battleground. Her parents were always there to care for her, and she’d lived in Sherwood all her life. She didn’t know a thing about what he was feeling except that she wanted to take some of the hurt from him, because he didn’t deserve it. 

There were no words but there were actions. She set her slurpee down, preparing to take his other hand in hers, even leaning forward enough he wouldn’t realize she was doing it, wondering if kissing him now would be comforting or too far. 

She didn’t have a chance to make up her mind. One moment her eyes were staring desperately into his, trying to telegraph that she’d fight for him if it would help him at all, and the next they’d snapped over to the door, where, silhouettetted in the sunset, was Heather Chandler. Her heels thudded like gavels, delivering a death sentence as she approached Veronica, snapping her name, and as she floundered, her objective, “Corn nuts?”

Veronica blushed, hating that she was so weak. She caved, folded like a flashcard when Heather told her what she wanted. She didn’t get why he’d confide in her when she wasn’t even able to ask Heather if they could bring him. JD was so strong, and she wasn’t, she accepted defeat before even trying to fight. JD had scars from the way his battles were fought, but at least he still fought them. She was never going to be the kind of girl he needed, the kind of girl who could hold him when he needed to break, but could also stand by his side when he needed to be a knight, instead of just counting on him to be her shield. But if telling her all that had helped him, then she had at least been some help. She’d take his secrets to her grave, no matter how Heather, Heather and Heather tried to make her talk. 

She missed the last dig Heather Chandler made at JD as she whisked her out the door, a single “sorry” dropping from Veronica’s lips like a petal from a rose. As she clambered into the passenger seat of Heather’s candy apple red Porsche, Her mind was filled with knights in trench coats, and dark, haunting eyes. 

Of course, after the first shot, she was telling Heather all about how he was going to be her boyfriend, Heather and Heather laughing at how quickly she got buzzed enough to tell them how much she loved the psycho trench coat kid, as Chandler called him. Chandler whirled her around after shots two and three, letting her see the room, pointing out guys who were looking at her who she approved of more than that one, guys with parents in the country club, guys who’d probably become lawyers, like JD had suggested she’d marry, assuming no one poisoned themselves too badly tonight. One even gave her an elevator look, and said she was “lookin’ good tonight.” And where there was honesty in JD’s eyes, there was lust in this guy’s, but it made her glow, realizing that people could want her. 

She danced, laughed, spun about, taking a couple hits of someone’s joint, and feeling herself relax, letting Kurt and ram bend her over for an instant, shocked, flashing them while they ‘punched it in.’ She ought to have hated it. 7-11 Veronica thought those guys were assholes, and should have poked Kurt’s black eye and asked how he was managing to even see her ass with that. She wasn’t 7-11 Veronica, she was Heather Blue, and Heather Blue drank, and danced, and laughed with the other colours of the heathers rainbow when their leader said something snarky about someone’s dress (“like she’s wearing a bath mat!”) or their dancing (“if that gets any sluttier, there’s going to be an orgy on the living room!”)

Heather Blue downed her fourth and final shot as Martha Dunnstock walked in, running to her friend and dancing with her for a couple moments, full of some kind of euphoric rush. She was beautiful ,and desirable, and didn’t feel like some kind of freak. Maybe they could go back to the way things were, to people accepting each other, and not being so full of judgement and hate and—god, she really was stoned if she thought Westerberg was getting better. Especially as Ram shot down her best friend of twelve years, spewing non-alcoholic cider everywhere. She could almost see the way JD would scoff at the jock’s actions. Could imagine the sarcastic quips he’d make about Westerberg’s finest, and she dissolved into a fit of giggles as they began to blindfold Martha for the piñata. 

After seeing the pig had been turned into Martha, she sprinted into action, jerking it away from the three Heathers, only managing because at least two of three were more drunk than even Veronica. Into the pool it soared, the pig and her reputation, as the angriest of the Heathers spun her about. Her stomach surged as a burning question rose to her mind. If Heather Chandler was red for hate, then Duke was envy and Mac was…fear? She gripped a counter, senses reeling as her trunk mind wondered what blue made her. 

Chandler berated her, telling her that not even the losers would touch her now, and it sunk in, no matter where she went, how far she got, this was going to scar her socially forever. Heather Chandler swore it, and as the demon queen her word was law. Trying to stand to go, she felt the world spin a little and vomited up the little bit of slurpee, and four shots she’d had since school ended, alongside a lot of bile, all down Heather Chandler’s pristine cherry red blazer. 

Chandler screamed like a banshee, and it predicted Veronica’s death, as her lips said something she couldn’t possibly have actually wanted to say. “Lick it up, baby. Lick it up.” With that she was damned, roaming the streets to get home, without a ride, and not calling her parents to come find her after what she’d done. The cold night air was doing wonders for her senses after the stuffiness that happens when everyone you know is crammed into one room. It did nothing for her spirits.

Veronica wasn’t an idiot, she knew Heather meant what she’d said and would act on it, would crucify her publicly, and make it look like she’d provided the cross and nails. She had about thirty hours to live before the entire school knew, both about the prank she ruined and the vomit. She ought to change her name and flee the state, like the end of some movie, hopping a motorbike and driving off into the sunset. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a motorbike…or a licence. But as she walked past a familiar bike, something flashed through her head.

She saw its owner, fists balled into the mattress, those dark, tortured eyes shining bright, so beautiful, full of her and not ghosts. She wanted the way his body would press into hers, insistently, his hips rolling, her body shuddering at the sensations, and she wanted to be so close to him. He was a man she knew wouldn’t steal her panties in some weird jock bragging rights thing she’d heard about as a freshman, a guy who’d hold her after, and run those cold hands through her hair, and let her spend the night out of chivalry, or kindness, or maybe, maybe simply because he wanted her to, after she showed him what she could make him feel. Wasn’t it about time the boy who’d been hurt so much got to feel something good?

She scaled the fence, feeling her skirt catch on it as she leapt from the top to the soft, grassy lawn of his backyard. It tore the back ever so slightly, just a couple inches, but it was enough to make her scowl. “Fuck you too, fence,” she muttered, hearing a loud cough from the window, and wondering if JD was getting a cold. She didn’t mind if she got sick, one last glorious night alive was enough for a dead girl walking. She hooked her feet into a trellis devoid of the roses that usually grew over them, able to grapple her way onto the roof below his window, laying back against it with a weak thump as she gasped for breath. Breaking in was difficult stuff, and seeing the distance she was from the ground shot little sparks through her body. She was high on life, on the idea that she was going to climb in there and make things beautiful.

Ambling over to the window, she spied her next adversary, a plastic pin that secured the window shut. Jerking the window hard, watching the frail, yellowed peg snap, she pried the window open, and she stepped relatively gracefully through, pushing back the curtains to enter a sparsely decorated room. A saxophone case in a corner, a garbage can, that looked like it was full of used black tissues, something crumpled and dark, at very least. The bed was where her eyes darted after taking it all in, his dark eyes looking at her like he’d found god, like she was god. 

She could drown in the feeling of his eyes on her, the feeling he gave her that though she didn’t understand, though she’d never know how to help him, she was enough. And then she realized where she was. She’d just broken into a guy she’d known for about 5 hours’ house. To do something with him that she’d only ever read about, but her desire, her need to have him in some way outspoke the rational part of her that was quieted by the shots. 

“Sorry,” she said, “Hope I didn’t wake you…even though it’s…twelve fifty-two?” it occurred to her that she was in fact wearing a watch, and she hazarded a glance at it, hating how much slower her brain read the time the little hands pointed to. “I just thought…I’m dead on Monday, when Heather is done with me. And I thought that I could ride you until I broke you?” The words were blunt and hopeful and sounded better to her than if she begged him to make this beautiful. This sounded hot and like something he’d want with her.

She supposed that had been a little surprising, as those beautiful eyes widened at her, and then swept over her to close, and his arm wrapped around his chest, and he doubled over, half coughing and half retching out more of what she’d thought were used black tissues. Her eyes were comically wide, jaw dropped in a stupor as he sat up and she realized how small he looked, in just a loose tank top, white, like a shroud, and stained with his own blood.He looked half dead, his skin paler than its usual bronze, sallow, and the bags under his eyes looked like deep bruises. She’d said she was a dead girl walking, but he was a dead man in an instant. Still, he didn’t ask her for help, nor comfort, instead offering her what she’d come for with a weak, “works for me.”

It took barely a glance to the garbage can and she recognized the objects. They were trumpet shaped flowers, crumpled from the trip up his oesophagus, stained in his blood. When she’d studied the disease, she’d read that once they came up completely bloody, there were only a number of hours left. The blood drained from her face. If she hadn’t left, hadn’t pissed Heather off, he’d have died alone. “That’s…that’s Hanahaki…” she heard her own voice stammering, heading for the bed, here he sat, hunched in on himself, almost as crumpled as the flowers. She stripped out of her blazer,, and sitting beside him on the bed after she kicked her shoes off. 

She had to be gentle with him now. Anything that scared him would make him hyperventilate, which would agitate the flowers in his lugs. Tenderly, she threaded her fingers into his dark hair, stroking through it like her mom used to do to her when she had the flu, hearing a faint whimper leave him as again, he bit his lip, bit it so hard she was sure it was on the verge of bleeding, tears held hostage in the corners of his eyes. He was so strong, her knight, not crying. He was dying and he still held strong for her, something that tugged at her heartstrings, and should have told hers something about his feelings, had she been thinking. “We need to get you to a hospital. They can get it out, and…” she trailed off. 

He shook his had so hard she was sure his world was spinning, and she understood why. The surgery was risky. Patients often suffered more and more, from greater onslaughts of flowers as they were on the way to the hospital. There was a chance the trip would kill him, but there was no chance staying here wouldn’t. But he was over sixteen. He got to choose, between death, and a state she’d read about being almost without emotion. His lips parted, slowly and he croaked out one word, “No…” before she watched in the kind of helpless horror most reserve for traffic accidents as he coughed and several stained blossoms came out. “please, just…I can’t lose her.”

Can’t lose her. His words hit her in the gut, as she envisioned some girl made of pure moonlight wrapped around his waning form. Was his girl dead, or had she just forgotten him when he left her city? Either way, if she was what he wanted in these last moments, Veronica could help him pretend. She slid down beside him and then pulled him down with her, so he could lay, one arm behind his neck, tracing circles on his shoulder, the other holding his hand so he’d never have to feel alone. She pressed her face to his chest, fighting back tears. She wouldn’t make his death about her, make him comfort her about his own passing. She couldn’t cry until he did. She sneezed his hand reassuringly, before asking his permission. “Can I stay? No one should have to do this alone.” She felt sticky blood on the front of his shirt, and heard him cough, though he didn’t open his mouth to let them out. The sounds were so violent, so loud compared to their soft voices. They tore through his lungs and the room like a gunshot. He nodded his response slowly, not speaking. 

She could hear how fast his heart raced, with fear or out of necessity, to get enough oxygen into him, with her ear pressed to his chest. Her fingers continued to trace patterns on his shoulder, hoping if she could get him to relax, maybe he could live long enough that she could get ahold of the other girl, could try to get her to say the words that could make this all go away. Her eyes flicked up at him, his dark eyes full of her, shining with unshed tears. His hair was pointing fifty different directions, and his skin was sallow, and what she saw was a man faced with death and still being strong for her. “You’re so beautiful, JD,” she mumbled.

Maybe those were words the last girl had spoken, because he coughed violently, this time not able to keep his mouth shut. She felt bits of it, felt his blood soaking through her shirt off the little flowers, staining her with his memory, and though his voice barely sustained it, he apologized. Veronica couldn’t see why he should have been sorry for anything. She didn’t care that comforting the dying man in his last moments was getting blood on her shirt. It seemed so absurd for there not to be some kind of physical trace of him left behind that wasn’t one of the flowers of death. Why was this happening to him in the first place? Why couldn’t the other girl just love him? She thought she would if she had any time to know him, to see him smile, even knowing all the reasons he had not to, to see the light in his eyes, and the way he spoke when he felt like he could speak. “I…I don’t understand why…” she trailed off. It would be no comfort to him that some girl who barely knew him was enchanted with him, didn’t get how some other girl was able to reject him. 

For some reason, that was when it hit her that he was going to die, that there would be no future, no meeting him at the 7-11 after class, no learning what it was like to ride his motorbike, and if she thought she was afraid, she knew nothing of what he felt. What it must have felt like being held by an affectionate stranger, while knowing the one person you loved most in the world didn’t love you enough to save your life. She could no longer stifle tears, thinking of it that way, wondering if he felt more alone with her there holding him, knowing she wasn’t the right one. She wished she could have been, wished she could have kissed him, and taken away this suffering, given him even a couple hours of no voices telling him to die, no losing battles against the darker parts of his mind or his lungs. Just a moment that he could feel whole. She looked up to see how he was faring, seeing that the dams in his eyes had given way, and releasing his hand to brush one tear aside, his cheek so soft and smooth beneath her finger tips. 

He jerked away, gripping the bucket and making the most agonizing coughing sounds yet, whimpers and sounds like he was gagging on the flowers in his throat. She stroked his back through the thin white fabric, feeling him shaking ever so slightly, hearing him cough harder and louder and more violently until a black rose left his lips like a puff of smoke, and he took it delicately in his hand, as he gasped harshly for the air it had denied him. One of his lips was bleeding slightly for one of the thorns clipping it on the way out. It was beautiful in a grim way, and he took her hand, setting it in her palm delicately, before curling her fingers up to hold it. She could feel how bloody it was, but couldn’t see it except on her pale hands. Then he spoke what was to be his last confession, “…thought you should have it.” 

_Thought you should have it._ What did that mean? What was he trying to say? Her eyes widened, and she remembered a little too vividly for a girl who’d done four tequila shots with the Heathers. Victims of the disease were buried with the last flower they coughed up—albeit cleaned, and a black rose. If they knew who the soulmate was, they were also sent a black rose. Usually they weren’t far behind. But why would he want her to have it, and not the girl from halfway to anywhere, the girl he really loved? Her fingers delicately curled around the blossom, as if she was afraid gripping it too tightly would kill him faster. 

She sat up, pulling away from his chest to look at him, to see if maybe, just maybe there was something to the sneaking suspicion at the back of her mind. She barely realized the way the tears were flowing until she tried to look at him, vision blurred. “Me?” she asked, keeping her voice low, again, afraid too much, to far and she’d kill him on the spot. He didn’t respond but to wheeze and her heart twinged, as she looked at him, her knight’s shirt stained with blood and petals, petals that, she realized, were her shade of blue. It was like time froze. She blinked back tears, feeling her throat constrict and her own lungs tighten. JD couldn’t die. She knew that much, knew she couldn’t lose him, not now, not before she really knew him.

Except she did know him, right? She knew his story, she knew his battles, both with himself and others. She knew he was painfully, irrevocably, fatally in love with someone, and he wanted to die rather than lose it. Veronica knew who he was, she saw him, all of him—or so she thought—in that moment. She couldn’t let him die. The world needed him. She needed him. Maybe, if there was any chance it was her, any chance he’d fight for her then she had to fight for him too. 

“JD,” she breathed, leaning in, taking his hand, and feeling his rose pressed between their palms, her tears spattering across his cheeks, which were pale and bloodless, like it was too late, but his shallow breathing told her it wasn’t. His eyes were shut, like he was waiting for the end, and desperately, she kissed him like it would be his last, kissed him long, and slow and deep, let herself into his mouth, held him so tightly the thorns of his rose dug into her hand, but didn’t break the skin. Maybe this was enough. Maybe, if she loved him, if she fought the years of neglect and suffering and loneliness, the years of internal war that he’d mapped out onto his arms, maybe she could be enough to even halt it.

He jerked away, rapidly, and everything in her fell as she heard him coughing and sputtering, and ran her hands gently though his dark hair, trying to comfort him, even though she was sure she’d failed. It didn’t matter what she thought or felt, it wasn’t her. The rose was a gift form him for staying with him, and not because this was all about her. She watched tangles of flowers rip their way out his throat, horrified with the numbers of them, but noticing that there was less blood, that was good, right? Some of the flowers were still the same blue as her blazer. She watched him gasp for air, almost sounding like his lungs were working, like he was getting in real breaths, and not the shallow gulps of air he’d taken towards the end. 

Just as she saw it, as it started to hit her that maybe it had been enough, maybe that was all of the flowers in his lungs, and he was going to live, he turned to her, tears glittering in his eyes and down his cheeks, and he pulled her, pressing his lips to hers, taking an unmistakably deep breath before he did. His hand clutched hers harder, stronger as he she kissed him, still feeling the rose between their hands, until they broke apart, both gasping for air, his body wracked with sobbing that he didn’t try to conceal. She thought, this time, the tears might have been happiness, and that was certainly what prickled in her tear ducts and spilled silently down her cheeks.

He spoke first, resting his head on her shoulder, his throat sounding like he’d eaten sandpaper, words coming out like they physically scraped his throat. “Veronica,” he spoke, and warmth fired through her, like there was some kind of candle lit in her chest, and she couldn’t contain the smile it brought forth. “I love you,” he whispered. 

Head resting on her shoulder, voice still harsh for all his throat had endured he whispered, “Veronica,” just softly, before saying the words that really mattered. “I love you.” She pushed him back gently, getting him to lie down on his back, pressing her head back over his chest, reassured by the gentle sounds of him breathing, of his heartbeat, which was slowing back to a normal rate. 

It hit her all at once that this was real ,that he was hers, she’d saved him. What had been a late night bad decision, had been a bid for closeness of one kind had ended in him surviving probably the fastest onset hanahaki she’d ever heard of. And, pressed close to him, feeling his warmth, she was just relieved that she’d left the party a dead girl walking, or she’d never have seen him again. She’d never have known what a difference it made to stand in a seven eleven one timeless afternoon and just listen. “I love you too, JD,” she said softly, watching him grin contentedly as he closed his eyes to sleep, and she followed suit, knowing that he’d be there with her in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading (and hopefully enjoying)!

**Author's Note:**

> Well thanks for reading this angsty mess of a fic. I have a longer story in the works (well, I have 12000 words of another au, but not the start...) comments and kudos are great motivation to write! And also if this gets a bunch of them, I might do a second chapter with Veronica’s POV, which would be a lot shorter, and less dark, but would give you an idea of how she fell in love with him, cause I know it seems super abrupt in this story, but there are reasons...


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